Charise Harvey:  

My Q&A sucks... oh gee, I like reading and camping and blah, blah, blah. Now this is some interesting stuff. Some things I learned while living in the south... 1) Show up early to vote. I actually got to know the people in line in Atlanta during the 2000 election. 2) Learn to like BBQ & Sweet Tea; if you don't like Sweet Tea, learn to say UNSWEET, even though they'll look at you funny. Southerners love their sugar, thus we have kettle korn. And I've had perfectly normal people tell me that Dixie brand sugar is sweeter than other brands. Oh...kay. What did they do, add sugar? And what you may think of as "soul food" is just regular food down there. You will love the banana/vanilla wafer delicacy. Black eyed peas & macaroni & cheese required for Thanksgiving. 3) Try not to be disgusted by Kudzu, the vine that ate the south, and just be glad it stops somewhere in Mississippi. Or Louisiana. Though I recently heard they have it in Virginia. 4) Be prepared to make friends at the DMV too; if you can actually find it. They seem to feel that one DMV in a 100 mile radius is enough. 5) Baptists (and don't try to tell THEM they're not Southern Baptists anymore) have a little elitism thing going on, with their my-church-is-better-than-your-church attitude. Church is big. Bigger than big. There are real police officers directing traffic outside every major church in town on Sundays. Um, fighting crime? Hello? I guess not on Sundays. Try to go another way if you'll be passing one of those churches; traffic really backs up. And forget about buying a car on Sundays; they're all in church. And you'd better get your beer before midnight on Saturday or you'll find yourself driving to another state for your Sunday football beer. 6) Learn to prounce every Spanish word you've ever heard incorrectly & try not to express too much dismay when you're emphatically told, "we prounce that Mar-TIN-ez (not Mar-TEEN-ez) down here and would appreciate it if you'd say it correctly". See also Bue (like Pew or Cue ball)-na Vista. I cringed every time I had to tell someone what exit I lived off of. 7) Get to the Atlanta airport REALLY early. Some idiot might run up the down escalator & (because of 911) shut down the whole airport, sending thousands of people into the parking lots & causing everyone for about 4 hours to miss their planes. That guy actually got death threats. Oh, and Blue side Parking is better than Red, even though Red is closer to baggage claim. Baptists park in Red... just kidding. 8) Bubba, Cooter, Skeeter and Boo are real people. Ref: gun racks & Bass Pro Shops. They're good old boys but most of them are pretty nice. You just may have to ask them to repeat themselves a few times. A friend of mine just got married to one & he's a sweetie; kids very well behaved. Your kids w/actually grow up to say, yes maam, no maam, yes sir, no sir. 9) Be prepared for going from California (too many laws) to not enough laws, i.e., questionable zoning (or lack thereof) that allows a gorgeous mansion on a hill to be built across the street from a 2 acre property w/more than 1 doublewide on it and 50 roosters & their little houses chained up in the yard. We almost bought a house on that street. Heck, the rich people did. 10) Dog fighting is alive & well. Save a pit bull, adopt from the local Animal Shelter (only 5 days before strays are put down). 11) Be prepared for the same guy on the corner selling velvet Martin Luther King, Jr. pictures to also have a selection of the Confederate Stars & Bars (flags, photos, bandanas, etc). Oh, and don't EVER confuse the Stars & Bars with the British Flag. You will be shunned. 12) Don't get on the "Loop" (or any freeway for that matter) in Atlanta anytime between about 3:30 and 7pm. You will become friends with those w/whom you're stuck in traffic. My husband only had 2 exits to go on the freeway to get to work and it took him almost an hour. I knew it was time to move when I was on the phone with him one day and heard him (pretty mild mannered guy) screaming out the window at somebody. 13) Check out the ICW (Intercoastal Waterway) which runs all the way through Florida. Nice deep channel for boating. Did I mention boating was big? And bass fishing. And don't even get me started on NASCAR. 14) Pine Mountain/Callaway Gardens, GA is a great day or weekend trip. Strangely enough, there is a Wild Animal Park (forget the exact name), kind of a Marine World/San Diego Zoo out in the middle of nowhere up in that area. They have actual Ligers (cross between tiger & lioness). You'll know what you're looking at when you realize, hey, lions don't have stripes... Also worth the visit: Roosevelt's Little White House in Warm Springs, GA; Stone Mountain, GA (theme song 'Devil went down to Georgia' during the nightly laser show), and all of Buckhead in Atlanta, which is a getaway in itself. Saw my first full length mink coat on a lady waiting for her car w/me at the car wash. Chatanooga, TN is quite lovely too. And the Lakes region of KY. 15) You may still hear some black folks being so deferential to whites that you wonder what century you're in. My husband was actually called "massa" by one of our moving men. 15a) Be prepared for very angry young black people. It's mostly because of the lack of quality jobs available to them. The older ones actually realize things are a lot better now, but still speak fondly of just learning to live with the way things were when they were segregated. Columbus High School had it's first integrated prom a few years ago and it made CNN & national news. Interviews with black students revealed they liked having separate proms and didn't think it was strange at all. 15b) Atlanta has an entire black gated community (sort of south/west ATL) of multi-million dollar h...Expand for more